Human Capital Dimension In Entrepreneurship Development - Croatian Experience

This paper tries to present development of entrepreneurship through human capital dimension from the SME and entrepreneurship development policy maker point of view. An insight to the transition process in Croatia in the last two decades shows that the process of creating favourable political and economic environment for the entrepreneurship development was contemporary with the transition to the market economy. The core of this manifold transition was the transition process of human resources. Croatia invested budgetary funds and provided systematic support for the needs of entrepreneurship development especially targeting SME sector and trying to boost the local and regional socioeconomic development. The improvement of intellectual capacity on the institutional as well as on entrepreneurs’ level was the backbone of the Croatian systematic support model of entrepreneurship development that lasts twenty years now since the first Government Programme on Entrepreneurship and SME Development in 1997. Within this Programme framework two capital national projects have the human capital dimension enhancement as core target on the long-term basis, the Entrepreneurship Promotion and Entrepreneurship Education. There are streamlined efforts in the past two decades to widely spread the entrepreneurship education. The Croatian national authority for SME policy has recorded continuity in education and training for entrepreneurship. The National Framework Curriculum recognizes the entrepreneurship as one among eight basic key education competencies as well as the Strategy for Entrepreneurship Education Development 2020. The entrepreneurship and/or entrepreneurship economics studies are included through higher education institutions. However, the entrepreneurship on the primary and secondary school levels is still extracurricular. This fact further supports the importance of the activities implemented by the South East European Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning among eight countries to introduce the entrepreneurship as a key competence at all levels of formal, non-formal and informal education. The intellectual capacity building of the supporting entrepreneurial infrastructure staff is crucial for local and regional socio-economic development. It is still an on-going process that targets the institutions which meet the entrepreneurs’ needs for counselling and consulting services, business information and training. The entrepreneurial network comprises 21 Regional Development Agencies, and about 80 entrepreneurial centres, entrepreneurial incubators throughout twenty one county of Croatia.